What's a Science?

[CDarwin]

Nice, broad topic here.

 

Where do you draw the line and say "this is a science" and "this isn't"? I suppose at one extreme you could say that anything that ends in "science" or "-ology" qualifies, on the other you could take a Rutherfordian position and say that physics is the only science and all else is stamp collecting. So what is science?

 

The easy answer is "any study that applies scientific methods," but in respects about every field does to certain degrees of emphasis. Historians will formulate hypotheses and test these from the historical record with various degrees of "scientific" robusticity, but does that make history a science?

 

Or, if you want to go really out there, you could say there are no fields of study that can truly be called "sciences." Science exists as an entity unto itself, and is only called upon by practitioners in these fields with varying degrees of frequency. Thus, physics is not a science, but physicists usually do science. History is not science either, but historians too may do science occasionally.

 

Maybe it's a bit of a semantic question but I think its interesting. It has real implications, too. In anthropology, for example, there's a debate on whether or not the socio-cultural field should be more properly approached like a science or like a humanity. Is cultural anthropology a science?

[stevo247]

Historians will formulate hypotheses and test these from the historical record with various degrees of "scientific" robusticity, but does that make history a science?

 

Didn't Darwin bring history into science?

[CDarwin]

Didn't Darwin bring history into science?

 

Well, history as in the, usually considered to be, humanistic field of study which goes by that name.

[swansont]

Well, history as in the, usually considered to be, humanistic field of study which goes by that name.

 

Except there's the adage that any field of inquiry that includes "science" in its name, isn't. (social science, political science, computer science, creation science, etc.)

 

I think what separates history is that there is much qualitative investigation, while science is more interested in quantitative results. And also the testing of elements that comprise events. Taker astrophysics as an example. You can't recreate a supernova or the big bang in the lab, but you can create individual reactions and find nuclear cross-sections and model the supernova or the nucleosynthesis right after the big bang, and then match your models with actual results. Do historians do this when arguing how much event precursors A and B affected event X?

[CDarwin]

I think what separates history is that there is much qualitative investigation, while science is more interested in quantitative results.

 

In physics perhaps, but there is plenty of qualitative science. In many cases quantitative data is a means to a qualitative conclusion. For example, you normally don't measure population densities of frogs around a pond for the measurement's own sake. You measure them so you can make some sort of conclusion about the ecology of the pond or the social structure of frogs that can only be described in a qualitative category.

 

I'm not trying to argue that history is a science. I'm just asking where we should draw the line between what is science and what isn't, with the assumption that history would normally be placed outside of that category.

[Daecon]

Any field of study or knowledge that invokes logic and logical processes.

[iNow]

Any field of study or knowledge that invokes logic and logical processes.

 

Since when is philosophy a science?

[Daecon]

Okay, I'll revise that: Any field of study or knowledge that invokes a posteriori logic and logical processes.

[DrP]

The word "SCIENCE" actually means "KNOWLEDGE" IIRC... Therefore encompasing everything. All knowledge is science.

 

 

wrt history, if you were to tell the story of the history of our model for the atom (starting with Thompsom's plumb pudding going through Bohr etc..), would you call it History or Science?

[YT2095]

for Me the answer to "What`s a Science" would simply be Any area of study that faithfully employs the Scientific methodology in order to gain further understanding.

[DrP]

for Me the answer to "What`s a Science" would simply be Any area of study that faithfully employs the Scientific methodology in order to gain further understanding.

 

Does that include private investigation? Or even torture?? (both employ scientific method to obtain knowledge - but are they sciences?)

[YT2095]

Torture is Very Much a Science! as for PI, I`m entire sure I know what you mean? are you on about the Sherlock Holmes sort?

[Mr Skeptic]

The easy answer is "any study that applies scientific methods," but in respects about every field does to certain degrees of emphasis.

 

Science is defined by how you go about finding knowledge, not by what kind of knowledge you are searching for. I would say, a science is any study that uses [only?] the scientific method to reach its conclusions. Additional requirements to be a science might be acceptance of the following premises: the principle of non-contradiction, and the belief that the universe is observable, objective, and consistent.

[YT2095]

awww Man! you were doing SO Well up until this point

 

and the belief that the universe is observable, objective, and consistent.

 

it`s Not all Observable, parts of it are Not objective, and we don`t know enough to comment if it`s Always consistent.

 

oh well

[falcon9393]

ok well what about like the history of science would that classifie as both or science or history or would it be like a new area of study you could call it "hience" or "sistory"

lol

[DrP]

Torture is Very Much a Science! as for PI, I`m entire sure I know what you mean? are you on about the Sherlock Holmes sort?

 

Yea I suppose so - you apply logical method to get the hidden information out - so I suppose you could call it a science?

 

I still like the sentance "All knowledge is science". It may be a bit pretentious but is true when you break it down. Any fact or statement can be broken down and explained scientifically I believe.

 

Even history - OK the study of history may not be science (although science is employed with geophysics for example), but the actually things studdied like, for example, a castle building or a war period include science (lots of science in war - lots of science in constructing a building).

 

 

(PS. I think Sistory sounds as though it should be illegal)

[fredrik]

I never had any conceptual problem to mix philosophy with science or never thought that what is technically "philosophical reflections" are irrelevent in "scientific processes" and development of science.

 

The real interesting stuff about science IMO, is not what we know, it's how to push the limit of our knowledge further. And this process is possibly more complex than the result of it.

 

One might even suspect that the question "what is science", is not a scientific question, but a philosophical one? So if you want to do "science-only", and not philosophy, perhaps you must not ask what science is?

 

Science ~ knowledge(latin), and we are starting to think about what is knowledge, we are in epistemology, which is usually considered to be philosophy.

 

/Fredrik

[DrP]

I have a Ph.D. in chemistry. Therefore I am a doctor of philosophy.

[fredrik]

I have a Ph.D. in chemistry. Therefore I am a doctor of philosophy.

 

There you go.

 

Philsopher also means "lover of wisdom", so what's up with scientists, what do they love?

 

/Fredrik

[DrP]

Philsopher also means "lover of wisdom", so what's up with scientists, what do they love?

/Fredrik

 

Knowledge??

 

(or their sisters if they are into history as well!? )

[stevo247]

I think that Sir Francis Bacon (a philosopher) is considered the father of scientific method. He emphasized the value of "experience" rather than the acceptance of religious dogma. Experience evolved into experiment. Observation, hypothesis, experiment. Inductive reasoning.

[fredrik]

An interesting, and quite current question, is the reflection around the scientific method à la the idea of progress by falsification, is wether the scientific method itself is static? Or should the scientific method itself be considered acquired?

 

If we consider the "scientific method" to be the in some sense, "optimim" method of expanding our knowledge, then how is this optimum method found? Once can see that this is exactly the same principal question that takes us from ontology to epistemology.

 

I have a feeling that some scientists, don't see the development (and thus questioning) of the scientific method itself, as a relevant question to science? At least that's the impression you can get from commonly seen argumentation.

 

Inductive reasoning, needs premises and a rule of reasoning. But I think that even the rules or reasoning should be questioned.

 

In it's simplest form, evolution can be though of as a random generation of ideas, and then a selection. toss the bad ones, keep testing the good ones. But at some point, the random generation isn't good enough, and more clever rating systems of theories to test strategies will be favoured. This seems to suggest evolution at all stages... not just evolution of a state of knowledge, as per the rules of learning - it should be expected that in parallell with this, even the rules of learning is evolving!

 

I think there are differeing opinons in this among people, and it seems that some of the argumentation in for example approaches to quantum gravity IMO are related to this.

 

The rules of reasoning, is our backbone, and fixed background. Without we get uncomfortable. This is not too unlike the question that seem to present themselves in QG. At least this is my personal opinion.

 

/Fredrik

[deltrobe]

The difficulty is in seeing Science as a philosophy. Ultimately, scientific observation is just recording; thinking about what the observations mean, that's philosophy.

But we've made the distinction between "scientific" and "philosophical" thinking for so long that we see them as two separate fields of endeavour (when they are actually two parts of the same field of endeavour).

 

Science is accurate observation and record-keeping; Philosophy is analysis of the records and looking for meaning and pattern. The latter is seen (nowadays) as a part of Scientific endeavour. Most scientists would not admit they're philosophers. But that's what the words used to mean (and still do, really).

[iNow]

The difficulty is in seeing Science as a philosophy. Ultimately, scientific observation is just recording;

<...>

Science is accurate observation and record-keeping;

You must be using a completely different definition than most. Since when is science merely "record keeping" and "observation?"

 

Perhaps there's an accounting firm in your area called "Science" and you're referring to that?

[thedarkshade]

I don't know who said it but once I heard:

 

"Science is nothing but an improvisation of itself unless it is for the betterment of humanity!" and it's quite meaningful you know...